Ashes to Ashes
by KoffeeKonundrum
Summary: Time is like a great wheel spinning. You start at the top. As the wheel turns, so do you. And with it, at first, everything is fresh, vibrant and flying. One-Shot for now, but if continued would be DM/HG.


He was a man, ruined. Getting old was something the young knew nothing about, which was odd considering the young think they know everything. Time is like a great wheel spinning. You start at the top. As the wheel turns, so do you. And with it, at first, everything is fresh, vibrant and flying. But as the wheel reaches full circle is lags the momentum it started with and achingly slow, it stops, just for a moment before it starts again for someone else.

He was reaching his end. This he did know. The reaper of youth had stolen his once good looks. Had taken away his strong body and left an old wrinkled shell. Getting old is earned, some would say, because not everyone makes it. His father had not been one of them.

He should have been prepared for it. As someone's child it is the natural order, to see what time does to us when it happens to our parents or elders. We only tend to see what we want to until it's too late. When regret has finally moved its way past our consciousness, past a dying brain, and laid itself into brittle bones it is too late.

Death is constant. He realized now, nearing his own. After all the misguided fantasies about dying with your family around you, feeling truly blessed that someone wants to be a part of your last, it is not meant to be. They can predict death, but most of the time they cannot be there when it truly happens.

The only witnesses are the caretakers charged with maintaining a "comfortable" existence. They are still turning and spinning. He, who had been diagnosed out of his mind some time ago, knew. His mind still latched onto the unsteady continent thoughts that passed through. He heard the whisperings.

"_Don't get too attached, he will die someday. They all will.__"_

"_Donald has shit himself again. Urgh. I don't think I can change him alone. Last time he rolled away and got shit everywhere!"_

It was definite. Most days, the once great man, didn't know where he was, who he was or how he came to be here. To them he was someone who was swaddled in a nappy like a fresh babe. With drool making its way down his chin as he was spoon fed his meals. The glazed look in his eyes did not hold the recognition or give any hint to the brilliance of the brain that used to be.

Schedules, ironically, would rule him until the end.

Meals were three times a day: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. He was fed his meds, crushed into his food due to his tendency of choking, twice a day. And every once in a while when the pain was too much and the only sound he ever made tore its way out, he was given his PRN pill reducing him to a state of numbness.

While surrounded by everything that was not, logic still held comfort. For him and for the sweet nothings he clung to that each day that were becoming more distant. He was becoming less of himself. His body knew that soon, it would be time to let go.

He would die here. That was certain. No one should get attached to him. Cruelty it would be, if it happened. To find solace once more when in the end he would be alone. Just as his mother had been, his aunt, his wife…

Alone and with anonymity, in a Muggle nursing home, Draco Malfoy's body would stop. His heart would give; his lungs would not pull and push any oxygen. Coding in his shared room as the nurses rushed from their smoke breaks and half-heartedly tried to save him. They knew when it was time for the suffering to end and the body gives up.

The coroner came in and his death was recorded. Natural causes the reason, and time of death was 17:13. The only strange occurrence was a tattoo on his arm. A skull with a snake protruding from its mouth of which the staff adamantly swore they had never been before. The coroner finished "Dracken O'Malley's" paperwork. Convinced on how utterly stupid this SNF was to not know when a resident had a tattoo. Its appearance lay with the crinkled skin showing its age. The tattoo had been there for years. He would be reporting this to the UK Department of Health. If the facility has missed this, what other kind of care were they lacking on?

"Dracken's" room was cleaned of any evidence of time's destruction and soon it would hold nothing of his being there. Few belongings were recovered from the mostly bare room and shoved into cheap white rubbish bags and carted off to good-will. The receivers would see the once magical items as old keepsakes, some would learn the truth and have themselves a right shit in the pants when a strange man showed up and with a wooden stick in their hands. But for the most part "Dracken O'Malley" would become a memory. Those with the memory of him would eventually forget and would succumb to their wheel, until finally it was as if he never existed. Well, at least to the Muggles, anyway…

**A/N: This popped into my head and I felt like I should write it down. I'm no seasoned author so I expect that any feed back I do get it will be constructive criticism. (Here's to hoping that is true.) Review if you would like. I of course know how he ended up there and what his life was like before that. But maybe you would like to know too. Review please :)**


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